Harrow Yangshuo!

29th April - Yangshuo "Chinese Village" my Arse!!

We got off the overnight train, pretty tired but looking forward to a shower even moreso. I also, was in desperate need of the, shall we say "facilities". Over the course of the overnight train journeys I have been training myself to use the lavatory as rarely as possible. And by the lavatory I mean the hole in the ground that the Chinese call the toilet. I will get you a picture, but so far I have not wanted to stay in the vicinity of the toilets long enough to get a photo. Basically you just squat over these holes in the ground and hope the "water" on the floor is just that, then you emerge, feeling rather "uuugh" douce yourself in anti-bacterial handwash and hope for the best. So if you can imagine the state of toilets on trains at home, imagine what these "squatties" as we've been calling them are like on trains that you're on for maybe 17 hours! I managed the duration of every overnight train with just one squattie visit - dehydration FTW.

From Guilin where our train arrived into, we fought our way onto a public bus to Yangshuo. It was a public holiday in China so we literally did have to adopt the Chinese "me first" mentality and jostle onto the bus. After takin the 1.5 journey to Yangshuo we got a bit of a shock.  Firstly, this is the description of Yangshuo according to our tour itinerary:

"Discover the village life surrounding the spectacular karst hills, river scenery and green paddy fields in one of China's best known scenic spots."

What we were actually greeted with was pretty much China's answer to *insert token Spanish sun holiday strip here*. It was crazy. Firstly, it was mega buzy. Secondly, for the first time on our trip we were not the only "big noses" around (we found out that the Chinese often refer to us Westerners as "big noses"!) We found ourselves staring at them, like we'd been stared at purely because it was such a novelty to not be the only westerners for a change! The streets were lined with tourists, both chinese and western. Loads of restaurants WITH ENGLISH MENUS. This was crazy - like so far on our trip if we weren't with Xu, to order our food in Chinese, we just pointed to a picture or made our own food. So to actually be able to choose exactly what we wanted was so exciting. We meandered through the streets, in awe of it's accessibility, and eyeing the lovely clothes and souveniers on display and made our way to our hotel, The Explorer - just off the bustling West Street in Yangshuo.

Upon arrival, we were genuinely shattered and starving. Unfortunately, despite the bright and airy reception area mine and Miri's room was a bit disappointing. We were on the ground floor and well the room was pretty damp and came with a leaky shower in the en suite. Determined not to be affected by this we resolved to spend as little time in the room as possible and rendez-vous'd with the rest of the group for some food. After having some food we took a stroll around the market streets. Got some earings for 2Y (24cent) and a bracelet for 5Y. Big spender, me.

That night we went to explore the Yangshuo nightlife. Some of our group had met a guy in our hotel in Shanghai that recommended we search out a hostel called Monkey Jane's when in Yangshuo and hit up their rooftop bar. We went in search of this place, and ended up at another rooftop bar called Mono. After one drink here we meandered further up a dark alley and stumbled upon the required haunt. Climbed up the numerous floors and emerged into youth hostel heaven. Bar with couches, fellow travellers and a raucous atmosphere...oh hello home! We decided to make a bit of a night of it, got chatting with fellow travellers, and played some beer pong!

We had great fun, it was such a laugh to mix with other young travellers. That was the one downside of our trip so far - when you're staying in hotels the opportunities to mix with other travellers is limited. We had a right laugh, but I made the somewhat uncharacteristic sensible choice not to move onto a nightclub as we had a early rise the next morning for a cycling trip into the countryside. Crashed about 2am.

30th April - Yangshuo - Extreme Country Cycling, Chinese Style

Got up feeling a little tired and no doubt dehydrated, but met a few others from the group for breakfast. Afterwards we met with Xu at 8.30am and he introduced us to Rose, our local guide who would be leading our biking tour for the day. We picked up our bikes, and began to make our way out of the city. Traffic in Yangshuo is crazy as it is all over China and the mentality seems to be "just go and hope for the best". We followed Rose and soon we were out of bustling Yangshuo and in the heart of the Chinese countryside.

The scenery was breathtaking. The hills nearby reminded me of pictures I've seen of Thailand, unbelieveable. Along the way we passed many paddy-fields and saw many locals going about their business, plowing their fields with water buffalo.

We cycled along these hidden paths through the karst countryside, until we reached Moon Hill. Some of our group decided to climb the steps up to the top, but after a strenuous morning biking I decided to stay with the rest of the group at the bottom of the hill, rehydrating with a bottle of water and a delicious diet coke! After Moon Hill we cycled to a local farmers house where we were prepared some local dishes to share Chinese style. The food was delicious, green beans, pork dish, chicken dish, pumpkin dish - all prepared really simply but lots of flavour packed in. Was really delicious and refuelled us for our cycle back to Yangshuo.

The cycle back to Yangshuo was M.E.N.T.A.L. We battled with everything from massive buses, mopeds, cyclists and pedestrians for our spot on the road. With the "me first" attitude held by all you really have to just go for it and try and be as safe as possible! Once you got onto an open stretch of road the breeze was really refreshing as it was blistering heat that day.

By the time we got back to Yangshuo we were one hot mess. I mean we were soaking with sweat (get a good mental image there Fr.) and in dire need of a shower. No lie, that was the best shower I've ever had. Although I think any shower at that stage would have felt like the best shower ever. After my shower, I went to a small bar across the street from my hotel that had one of those swingy chairs on their first floor balcony and just watched the world go by.

That evening we all got together for our last night in Yangshuo and decided how else to spend but back at ole Monkey Janes! We set up shop back beside the beer pong table and started to play. To explain beer pong to those that haven't been lucky enough to play - two people play each other, one standing each end of a long table. At the end of each side there are 5 cups, a large bottle of beer split between the five cups. Each opponent has two balls which they must aim to land in the other person's cups. If you land the little ball in one of their cups they must drink the beer. The first person to end up drinking all their cups loses!

We had some amount of fun there and mixed with lots of others for a great night. Chris the resident beer pong champion struggled through lots of games and god love him, retaining his title left him a little worse for wear! Don't know where the hours went but I believe we were still in the local KFC at 5am! Luckily the next day we hadn't too many plans so we had recovery time!

1st May - Yangshuo - Recovery Massage

Well what better way to get over a long day, and even longer night than with a full body massage. A few of my fellow travellers had been for a massage the day before and judging by their smiling, relaxed demeanour afterwards I thought "why not!". After lugging around my rucksack, I thought I'd sacrifice the "relaxation massage" for the more thorough "therapeutic massage". This would work out the muscles big time. After breakfast I popped into the massage place, Dr. Ying's or something and well I'm not gonna say "enjoyed", but more "endured" the hour of hard work the lady put into working out the knots in my back.

Afterwards we had some downtime before meeting Xu to head to, yes you guessed it, ANOTHER night train! We rendez-vous'd about 5pm and got the local bus back to Guilin. We were all quite hungry at this stage, so Xu brought us to the best option available near the train station, a "steakhouse". Any steakhouse that serves your "meat" with a side of spaghetti, and a fried egg, with optional sides of prawn crackers, fruit, popcorn, salad, cream and yogurt ain't no normal steakhouse. Anywhoo, none of us died so hey could be worse.

At about 7.30pm we all boarded what would be our last night train from Guilin to Hong Kong.

In the compartments next to us were a group of children. My first thought was "these bastards better not be up all night" but then after starting our journey some of them came to talk to us. Their English was amazing. They had been learnin English for 5 years and were only about 7-12yrs old. They were so cute. They were obviously pretty well off as they told us they were all going to London this summer to a summer school to do English. These kids were so smart, they'll be running China in a few years. Luckily they were polite kids and hit the hay early. Next stop...Hong Kong!

Harrow Three Gorges!

26th April - Chong Qing - Hot Pots and Cute Pandas!

We arrived off our third night train into Chong Qing (actually pronounced Chong Ching) at about 10amish. We had a fairly hectic few days of travel ahead. We taxi'd to a hotel where we would leave our bags for a few hours before getting a 4.5hr bus journey that evening to our boat for our 2 day cruise (I'm taking some poetic license using the word "cruise" ...more later!). At first we thought this could be a bit of a drag, but then one word made all those worries go away...PANDA'S!! Yes Chong Qing Zoo is home to a few pandas and we would have time to go there and see them!

Off we popped like giddy school-children with a spring in our step, and got a taxi to the zoo. It was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day, just to make things even better. We arrived at the zoo and made our way straight to the Panda enclosure. At first we didn't know what to expect, perhaps thinking the pandas would be behind screens or just on view at certain hours etc. but then we turned a corner and just couldn't believe our eyes. There, perched on a bench, happlily munching his way through a mass of eucalyptus (or so I'm assuming) was a panda! Well I grabbed my camera as quickly as a papparazzo about to get a crotch shot of Katie Price, and started getting a few shots.





We couldn't believe how close we were able to get, and even happier to discover there was more than one panda in the zoo. However, when we strolled around to see the other pandas, they were more sedate and kept in the shade so it was hard to get a good view. Still, we were ecstatic wtih our pictures of the first panda so nothing could have wrecked our buzz.







We were on a bit of a tight schedule so after a quick look around some of the other animals in the zoo, we grabbed a taxi back through the centre of Chong Qing to our hotel. Earlier on in the trip, Xu had mentioned the possibility of trying a local speciality dish on our trip - a Hot Pot. He did stress though, that if you didn't like spice, then pack up and stay at home ;)

Me of course, afraid to miss out, was like "sign me up buddy!", and here in Chong Qing was a restaurant highly recommended for its Hotpot. Joining me an Xu, the other foodies that braved the Hotpot challenge were my fellow dumpling banqueters - Emma and Bethany, and for the hotpot, fellow Geordie Niki came along too.

To explain how it works, a massive bowl of oil with chillis, chillis and more chillis floating and marinating in it is placed over a flame in the centre of the table. You then choose from the menu the various items you'd like to have "hotpot'ed" shall we say. Xu knew we were a fairly easy going bunch so he just went hell for leather and ordered loads of stuff. We had everything from fish, meatballs, quails eggs, tofu strips, mushrooms and many more items that I just can't remember! Basically you tip in the dish of raw meatballs / mushrooms etc, and wait for them to rise to the top of the bubbling bowl of spicy hot goodness. When this happens you know they're ready to eat.

All I can say is thank jaysus we'd been using chopsticks for a while now coz can you imagine trying to pick up a tiny quails egg, with chopsticks from a boiling bowl of oil... WITH CHOPSTICKS. Tellin ya, it was like a challenge from the Krypton Factor. But you know yourself, when there's food involved - when there's a will there's a way!
Holy god was it hot. I mean our skin was sweating, our noses were running, even our eyes were sweating!! If there was any hint of a blocked nose, or a clogged pore amongst us, it was long gone by the time this meal was over! But the food was amazing. Once you got over the initial "ohmygodI'vecrematedmytastebuds" feeling, the spice tasted great - that's the one thing I have to admit about the food in China so far, I love how they pack the flavour in! After the h-h-hotpot lunch, the 5 of us strolled back to the hotel, core body temperature slowly returning to normal. Along the way Xu dropped into conversation, that we may not be feeling so great later, if our stomachs weren't used to the oil and heat. We were like "ah here Xu thanks for letting us know NOW!!!". Nothing we could do then, so we all just gave each other a hopeful look, and returned to meet the others.

When we re-convened with the group, we all made the back-breaking 20min walk to our bus depot, where we would take a 4.5hour bus journey with other chinese holiday makers to a boat which would sail us down the Yangtze River, through the famous 3 Gorges. The air-con on the bus was a welcome relief, and all in all the journey wasn't so bad.

We emerged from the bus a little tired, but excited to see what this "boat" would be like. Well you know what, we weren't disappointed! We all checked into our rooms, each of which was like a small hotel room with an en suite. A lot better than we expected! Also on the top of the boat we saw to our delight there was a huge deck area. After a hectic few days travelling on buses and overnight trains we all made a plan to grab some deck chairs and do a whole lot of nothing on that deck, the following day!
27th April - Club Feckin' Tropicana

We awoke completely refreshed and energised on Friday the 27th April. Xu had told us the night before that we would be entering the first of the three gorges at approx. 10.45am so we all made our way to the top deck to have a goo. It was absolutely beautiful, if you happen to see or have any 10 Yuan notes, the first gorge of the three gorges is on the back of this note.

Gorge 1 of the 3 Gorges

After we sailed past the gorge, we all went to the dining room on the boat and had lunch. The lunch was buffet style, so as much as you'd like. Lots of traditional chinese dishes on offer and salady stuff and some potatos - which I attacked with the kind of enthusiasm usually displayed by a child at a birthday party. Delish they were.

Once suitably stuffed, we donned our beach attire and hit the deck like it was poolside as the Beverley Hills Hotel. Lucky for us, all of our fellow passengers were gone on some boring sounding day trip so we had the boat to ourselves, and more importantly the deck and all its recliners to ourselves. Whacked on the factor 20 and laid out to bake. Heaven.

I'm the white one

That evening we went down to the bar to see the "local entertainment" Xu had promised us. Oh entertaining it was. The entertainement consisted of a few locals getting their Celine Dion on, on the Karaoke machine. It was absolutely hilarious. I had to get a video of one guy, it was priceless. His whole song (all in Mandarin of course), seemed to consist of high notes, which Celine Dion himself decided to pitch just slightly off key - it was carnage. Wildly entertaining though! After a couple of beers, I took my slightly less albino'd skin to bed.

28th April - On the road again...

Well this day pretty much consisted of travel, travel and more travel. We left the boat at 7.30am where we got a 1.5hour bus to some town. The only thing of interest that happened along the way is we passed the 3 Gorges Dam. It's a huge 30km long dam. But lets face it, at 8am in the morning, a dam's a feckin dam. I took one obligatory blurry photo and let Morrissey sing me back to sleep on the bus.

We arrived in some town in the arsehole of nowhere about 10am. We got some food in the Walmart and boarded another 4.5 hour bus to Wuhan. In Wuhan we would be boarding our next night train. We had some time to kill so grabbed some steamed dumplings for dinner, and got aboard. Boarded the train about 7ish bound for Guilin.


Harrow Xi'an!

23rd April - Arrive Xi'an

We rode into Xi'an at 8.30 on the 23rd April, hangover free, and ready to go! Then we queued with our backpacks for about 50mins for a taxi, and well frankly some of that enthusiasm waned. Got another crazy taxi ride to our hotel - The Home Inn Hotel and checked in. Rooms much like the Jinjiang Inn - bright and spacious. After checking in, we met Xu outside our hotel and he brought us on our orientation walk.

Xi'an is a walled city (I know, they feckin love their walls in China) and the centre of it is walled by this massive wall thats 14km in circumferance. We walked to the wall and hired bikes to cycle the length of it. This was really enjoyable, and apart from the smog, was nice to cycle along, wind in our hurr!

After our cycle we walked through these artists markets where we saw lots of Chinese artists writing mandarin in really interesting scripts, and others selling jewellry, and back to the hotel. Whilst walking through the market, Xu was just explaining to us some of the history of the area when this toothless old man walks up behind me and starts pointing to me and talking mandarin. Xu started laughing and translated what he said... he said "she is so so white" pointing to me!! (had to say I first thought he said "she is so so wide" so I was happy to be called just white ha ha ah!) There he was sticking his arm up beside me laughing his head off. See PAYSHTY Irish skin is IN (with the Chinese generation in the winter of their lives anywhoo!!).

After chatting up the local toothless men of Xi'an we headed back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner. We headed to a local restaurant where Xu ordered what seemed to be every dish on their menu, and once again the dishes kept coming. This restaurant was a bbq restaurant so everything was on skewers - we had everything from spicy pork to tofu strips to lamb chops, chicken wings, a great mix of food.

Some was really spicy and some had a little less heat. All in all delish. And in total it cost only 33Y for the food, i.e. less than €4 and then only 5Y for the beer, that's 60cent...it's really gonna hurt when I have to start paying real world prices of €5+ for a beer again!

24th April - Xi'an - A Wonder of the World and a Wonderful Budget

Xi'an is probably most famous for The Terracotta Warriors - now known as the 8th Wonder of the World. These are an army of 10,000 terracottta warrior statues, dating back to 700BC that were found under ground in the mid-70's near the tomb of the first emperor of China - Qin (pronounced Chin), of the Qin Dynasty. They are really impressive, as they are so fantastically preserved for being so old. Each of the individual statues are unique and vary in size depending on their rank in the army. They were said to be built around the tomb of Emperor Qin to protect him in his afterlife. They are still excavating the area and you can see the archaeologistst still at work on site.

We got a bus out to the site at about 8.30am, and had a nice snooze en route. After arriving we explored the exhibition - they have a quick short film that gives you a quick overview of the history of the Qin dynasty, then there are three large pits which house the warriors in three separate buildings, and then a large museum with artefacts that they also discovered on site - such as tools and weapons, and three large bronze horse sculptures that were also found on site.

All in all it was an interesting place, and obviously a huge tourist attraction, but it did kinda feel like the kinda place I would have gone on a school tour in primary school.

When we got back to Xi'an, we took some downtime and I started working on building my appetite for the night ahead! For tonight would be the "Dumpling Banquet", that myself, Emma, Joanne and Bethany signed up for. This is an elaborate meal served in this lovely theatre (there's an option to go and see some traditional dancing afterwards but we skipped this), and they serve you 16 various different types of dumplings. They were really fantastic. We got everything from scallop dumplings to pork dumplings to sweet walnut dumplings served at the end of the meal. We were really satisfied after the meal and it was a great traditional chinese foody experience.It was the most expensive meal on the trip, 100Yuan, so €12, but I really thought this was a price worth paying for such a good quality traditional meal.

Following the meal, we rendez-vous'd at the bar beside our hotel, The If Bar (are you sensing a trend yet) with the rest of our group and had a couple of drinks. There was live music playing, first there was just a singer guy, only in his early 20's. He had a really good voice and could deffo play guitar but I did have to laugh when he cracked out the one "Engrish" song he knew - Tears in Heaven! After this guy, a band started but at this stage we were all wiped after the long day so we crashed.

25th April - A dose of Tai Chi, Caffeine and a Win of White Rabbits

After making making the sensible decision not to go on a wild one last night, we decided to take some advice Xu offered and get up at the crack of dawn to check out the local older Chinese men and women take their morning exercise. He told us that they get up just when the sun comes up and they do everything from Tai Chi to Ping Pong to random exercises like kicking their legs up towards their heads.

We all met bleary-eyed at 6am in the lobby and made our way down towards the park beside the city wall to see what there was to see. And sure enough we were greeted by many older Chinese people getting their "gym" on. There were groups doing what looked like slowed down line dancing, others doing tai chi, others playing badmonton / pingpong.

It was really interesting for us to see the locals going about their daily routine- but judging by the quizical looks we were getting from them, it was even more interesting for them seeing our asses there. It was a really lovely morning, so I decided if you can't beat them join them so I went back to the hotel, changed my runners and headed back to the park for a quick jog. Along the park they had lots of those static gym machines that are all-weather. If you know the strand in Clontarf, you may have seen similar equipment along the walk there. So I had a jog for a while then joined some of my Chinese friends for some random exercises. They seemed to find it quite amusing but I really enjoyed getting involved with them!
Afterwards I headed back to the hotel, and en route picked up some street food from what looked like a very popular vendor. The breakfast itself consisted of what looked like a slightly thicker crepe, with a fried egg within it, brushed with a spicy chilli paste, with a sausage (of some description) in the middle. It was absolutely amazing, and well worth the 5Y (€0.60). Definitely the best breakfast solution I've had so far in China. Headed back to the hotel then to shower and pack, and myself and Miri headed to a nearby starbucks to get our caffeine fix and catch up on some postcard writing. We strolled around the Muslim Quarter afterwards, and then met with a few of the others for food. We had another night train ahead of us, and after sampling many of the local delights, a few people had a hankering for some pizza so we went to pizza hut. I decided to give the pizza a miss but they did have a chicken and rice with curry sauce that sounded like it might hit the spot so decided to give this a go. It wasn't quite your chipper curry sauce but it wasn't far off, so I left happy!

We headed back to the hotel, picked up our rucksacks and headed to get a taxi for our next train. However, getting a taxi proved a little more difficult than anticipated, as it was rush hour, so we ended up having to get a bus to the train station. So on we lumbered, each of us struggling with our ever increasing rucksacks onto a local bus, rammed with commuters during rush hour!! We just about managed not to crush anyone or ourselves and made it to the train station in one piece.
Whilst we were waiting in the busy train station some local men came over and started trying to talk to Miri. As Miri is quite tall, and typically German with natural blond hair and tanned skin the Chinese are really intrigued by hear. Xu was with us so he translated what they were asking. It was interesting to talk with them as we so often are stared at but it's hard to tell from our perspective what they're so interested in. They just were asking where we were from and what we were doing there and various things like that. You could tell by their expressions that they were just genuinely intrigued by us. But what you come to realise after a short while in China is that we, as Western looking people, are really quite a rarety in all parts of China, no matter how globalised we think the world is, there we were this evening in a heaving train station with genuinely thousands of people and we did not see one other Western looking person. It really does give you some perspective.

Once we boarded the train, we were all in good form after an enjoyable relaxing day. After having few snacks the words "Texas Hold'Em" were uttered by some in our group and instantly my ears pricked up. I took a break from writing this here blog, and joined in with Xu, Kim, Daniel, Emma and a fellow Chinese train traveller for the game. Since we're all backpackers on a budget, we weren't betting with money but with a far tastier commodity...these delicious chinese sweets called White Rabbits. At one point I was tempted to just eat my pot haha, but instead with a few strategic moves and a few bluffs - I won!! Great way to end the day. Headed off to sleep now, if I can sleep through Xu's loud snores...these open bunks do have their downsides!!

Harrow Shanghai

20th April - Arrive Shanghai

So we arrived in off the night train at 10.20 on the 20th April. Apart from us all being in dire need for a shower we were all feeling surprisingly refreshed! So we got taxi's from the train station to the hotel, The Jinjiang Inn. This hotel even nicer, really bright and spacious rooms. Again I would be sharing with Miri and we would stay like this for the whole trip - suited us both fine! After freshening up we met Xu for our orientation walk of Shanghai. First impression...A LOT more cosmopolitan than Beijing. The people, although staring, didn't stare QUITE as much, and when we reached the main shopping street, Nanjing Street there were lots of familiar stores` and a MASSIVE apple store. Although for anyone visiting, Xu has told us it's definitely cheaper "to buy ipad" in Hong Kong. Not that that was on my shopping list anywhoo ;) We walked down Nanjing Street until we reached the Bund, the main river that runs through Shanghai. On the far side of the river there are a lot of interestingly shaped sky scrapers that adorn most of the Shanghai postcards. The tallest building looks like a massive bottle opener (well to me anyway!). Xu told us that most Shanghai-ians (my word) aren't the biggest fans of this building as it was financed by the Japanese and cost about a billion dollars, so in typical Chinese style they're in the process of building a slightly taller building just beside it, like they can't be shown up like that!!

After walking along the bund for a while we reached this massive bazaar. It was amazeballs. The buildings were all typically what we'd call "chinesey" in their style, and there were lots of local crafts and the typical touristy shizzle on sale there. The bartering in China is honestly a skill in itself. You really have to be ruthless. From talking to the Australian guy in the Beijing hostel, he had told us he'd been told from the starting price they give you, you usually end up paying about 10%-15% of that. Like there's no logic to it at all!! It's not like say New York, where you kinda offer 50% of their price, and then barter back up, but it's just the way it's done. For example at this bazaar, I wanted to pick up some postcards and a magnet (did somebody say TOURIST!) So for a pack of 12 postcards and a typical magnet, the lady said 180Yuan, about €22 - like ridiculous! The final price I ended up getting it for... 20Y, less than €2.50. Xu looked a mixture between horrified and impressed when I told him what I finally paid. I think he was a bit scared...I had to start assuring him that I wasn't some ruthless Del-Boy!!

After we got back from the market, we chilled for a bit then we met Xu and he brought us to an Acrobatics show. It was, to coin a phrase not quite as popular in China yet, "TOTES AMAZE"! No joke it was seriously impressive. The "acrobats", i.e. children and teenagers doing everything from swinging between massive ropes without any harnesses, to amazing gymnastic type displays to fitting 8/9 people on one rickity bicycle, to tight-rope walking. The final display was the "Bikes of Doom" or something, basically you remember those wheels of death type displays you'd see at fun fairs at home sometimes. Where 2/3 motorbikes spin round and round this circular structure. Well this was a massive enclosed caged sphere, and they fit 5 of them in there zooming around after each other, really impressive!

After the show, we decided to get a taxi back down to the Bund to get a view of the skyscrapers with all their lights on in the dark, it was cool...uuuuuntil it started to lash from the heavens and we got absolutely soaked! After a few token pictures we squelched home and just had a few beers in the room.

21st April - Explore Shanghai...Eat, Shop...Karaoke.

The bazaar we visited on our first day in Shanghai had a famous "Steamed Bun" Restaurant - to explain, these "steamed buns", look like what we would call dumplings to be honest. Xu had told us about these before we got to Shanghai, but when we saw the MASSIVE queue of people waiting to get their steamed buns we knew he must not have been exagerrating about how good they were. As much as I wanted to get them then, we were waaay to hungry to queue for an hour, so we grabbed something handy. We decided it was worth the queue so we headed back early on day 2 in Shanghai. When we got to the bazaar, hoping "the early bird catches the ...steamed bun" theory might save us some queuing time we were greeted by an even longer queue than the day previous, but screw it, steamed buns we wanted and steamed buns we were gonna get. We joined the queue and enjoyed the "interesting" aromas that greeted us from the top of the queue ha ha! When we got to the top, we ordered the international way - i.e. lots of pointing and making the "1" indication. When we received our little tray of steamed buns, we did like the locals and poured some vinegar over them and moved out of the way to find somewhere to enjoy them away from the hustle and bustle. Well they were definitely worth the hype - inside there was a mixture of minced meat (ignorance is bliss) and crab meat, and with the vinegar there was a lovely tangey taste to them. I know I'm not really selling them here, but trust me they were delish!

After our steamed bun brekkie I was on a mission to buy a camera. I had watched an informative documentary on Channel 4 (ok ok ...Gok Wan's "Made in China" programme, maybe not quite the discovery channel) about these massive electronics emporiums that are around Shanghai, so I googled any specific camera-related ones. I found one, got the address and nearest subway station and set off on a mission. I was joined by Emma and Kim who were just up for a bit of an adventure. We made it through the three jam packed subway rides to reach our final destination, however once there, we were really flying by the seat of our pants to try and find the actual buildings, as surprisingly our 5 days in Shanghai hadn't quite yet given us mandarin sign reading capabilities!! We decided to just head down in one direction, and hope for the best! After a few gestures from locals we finally found what looked like the correct place and headed in. I knew what camera I was looking for a Panasonic Lumix DMC..something something so upon entering I avoided the Nikon and Sony shops. However after a quick look round the ground floor, there seemed to ONLY be Nikon and Sony shops. Aah, second floor it must be, I thought. Well 4 floors later and all we were greeted by was empty shop units and the odd camera bag shop and it looked like our camera shopping adventure was looking like one big failure, and I felt like quite the dope. So as we left the "emporium" with my tail between my legs, we looked around for a taxi, not wanting to face the crazy busy subway again, we walked up the street...what did we see on the OTHER side of the building we were in... a massive building with a MASSIVE camera sign on the building...I mean what could have given it away!!! DELIGHTED, we headed in...ground floor...BAM, a Panasonic store, FILLED with Lumix cameras! Found the camera I was looking for, unleashed some of my master bartering skills and walked out, camera in hand, and a good deal gotten. Smug as fuck, we got a taxi back to the pub beside our hotel for a couple of celebratory beers.

We couldn't stay beering in the local for too long, as we had a major night ahead. Oh yes, a major night indeed. We planned a Saturday night out Shanghai Styleeee...that meant one thing...Karaoke! We met up at 6pm and grabbed some food nearby, then at 9 on the button, we hit up the Karaoke place, and it was hoppin! Xu had told us that Karaoke was pretty popular amoungst the young Chinese folk so we had to go and do like the locals and give it a bash. We had done a few vocal exercises (i.e. gone to the pub for a few vocal chord loosening beers) and were ready to go. Frankly, when Xu saw our enthusiasm he looked a little scared! We choose plenty of songs, got a round of beers in (12 bottles of Tiger beer for 102Yuan, i.e. €12 and cracked out the tunes. We all gave it a bash (Blur's Song 2 and Labrinth's Earthquake being my two tunes of choice) and went all out. As fantastic as everyone was, I think we would all concede that the highlight of the night was our Danish couple Marianna and Kim's version of Barbie Girl that stole the show. To put this into context, Kim (guy by the way, supposedly a normal guy's name in Denmark) is a total rocker and a musician as a living, so to here him doing "Come on baahbie lets go paaahty" in the exact accent of the guy from Aqua had us all on the floor laughing! Brill fun!

Three hours passed, and copious rounds of Tiger beer later we had come to the end of our Karaoke time. Unwilling to let the night end there, we head back to our local bar beside the hotel and continued the party! After showing yet another barmaid how to make baby guinness we continued to party until the early hours.

22nd April - Hangover + 17 Hour Train Journey = The Fear.

Well suffice to say drinking Shanghai dry of beer led to a rather subdued group on our last day in lovely Shanghai. After waking up, showering and attempting to pack, we got a taxi to the train station. The taxi drivers in Shanghai are MENTAL. I mean there is actually no sense the driving rules in Shanghai, or even China in general from our experiences so far. I mean it's ever car/bike/pedestrian/tuktuk for themselves. They just drive where they want to drive beeping all the time just to let people know that they're there and they're not going to stop for anyone! I mean there were so many incidences when we were all just shutting our eyes and shouting out "ohmyfuckinggod" we lost count!

Well we finally made it to the train station, and boarded our train before 4pm. Once we got on the train, after lugging our massive backpacks with us, we all just crashed out. We were absolutely wiped from the night before. I think for about 2 hours nobody was even able to form sentences. After a few hours I decide to relieve the boredom and fear of "god what did we get up to last night" thoughts by watching some of Alan Carr's stand-up comedy on my laptop. Well this did the job perfectly, and after a couple of hours, "the fear" relieved and we slept off the hangover. Next stop - Xi'an!